


I Tried to Hold These Secrets Inside Me (My Mind is a Deadly Disease)

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Series: Death Is Not An Illusion [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Grayson (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: BAMF Dick Grayson, Control Issues, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson Whump, Dick Grayson is Joker (DCU), Dick Grayson-centric, Dubious Morality, F/M, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insanity, Morally Grey Dick Grayson, Murder, Psychological Trauma, References to Depression, References to Forever Evil (Comics), Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Song: Control (Halsey), Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: Before now, there isn’t choice.There’s right and wrong defined by a man who hurts him more than he helps him.There’s black and white defined by a society that has no sense of grandeur or eloquence.There’s son and failure defined by someone who can’t keep his views consistent.There is yes and there is no and there is what he wants and what he’s allowed and what he’s told and what he’s not.There are wandering hands that don’t give a damn for his tears and his protests. There are red smiles and crowbars that take what they want without thinking of anything outside of satisfaction. There are choices and decisions and doubts he isn’t privy too, because of who he isn’t rather than who he is.So he doesn’t care.So he doesn’t stop.So he makes a choice.…and he doesn’t care if it’s wrong, when right leaves him guilty with holes where he should be, pieces shattered and broken and taken by crowbars and red eyes and friends and liars and lovers and enemies.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, Dick Grayson & Harleen Quinzel, Dick Grayson & Joker (DCU), Dick Grayson & Trauma, Dick Grayson/Harleen Quinzel
Series: Death Is Not An Illusion [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1491155
Comments: 30
Kudos: 149





	I Tried to Hold These Secrets Inside Me (My Mind is a Deadly Disease)

**Author's Note:**

> So it's been awhile! I've been in the HP fandom for the last month, but I sill have several pieces in the works for all my lovely readers!!!! This one is a result of this BEAUTIFUL fan-art made by floating-in-blue (ao3) aka senti-cent (tumblr)
> 
> (https://runnfromtheak.tumblr.com/post/618410529521876992/senti-cent-why-the-long-face-batsy-been)
> 
> Aaaanyways, I have projects that will be released at random, some old, some new, but I got a burst of creativity for this one and decided, why not?
> 
> I love you alll!!!!

**_They send me away to find them a fortune  
A chest filled with diamonds and gold  
The house was awake, the shadows and monsters  
The hallways, they echoed and groaned_ **

****

It’s nothing so simple as sanity, nor something as complex as madness.

It’s somewhere in between – _something_ in between – an unknown area of grey he struts along like a performer on a tightrope.

He is the _Gray_ Son after all, is he not?

**_I sat alone, in bed till the morning  
I'm crying, "They're coming for me"  
And I tried to hold these secrets inside me  
My mind's like a deadly disease_ **

****

His face is pale and bloody the first night, laughter echoing the abnormally quiet Gotham streets. He paints the town red in blood, single-handedly dismantling Roman Sionis’s localized criminal empire in the span of sixteen hours. It’s _amazing_ what can be accomplished when one has fun, when one removes those _pesky_ guidelines preventing one from reaching the height of their potential.

****

**_I'm bigger than my body  
I'm colder than this home  
I'm meaner than my demons  
I'm bigger than these bones_ **

****

The paleness spreads on the second night, discoloring as much skin as he can see and leaving trophy-scars near invisible with his new complexion. He spends his day in Court – not the _legal_ Court, the _illicit_ one, the _fun_ one – earning his inheritance. Cobb’s blabber had served a purpose, beyond mere amusement and blood, as Dick knows what he’s owed. Before, before this… _revelation_ , this… divine _enlightenment_ ( _better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven_ ) he’d been one idiotic move from full-on canonization with a martyr complex only an orphan can have.

****

****

**_And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"  
I can't help this awful energy  
  
_ **

Robin had been a monument to dead birds who flew too close to the sun and fell (or is that the wrong metaphor? Everything seems blurry, his thoughts distorted and muddled, except for when he sees in _red_ and _blood_ and then everything is beautifully _mercifully_ clear). He’d been but a child, a child bearing a pain too big for his heart, for his mind, so he let it corrode everything in him – everything he touched –until he was but a living tragedy, a breathing masterpiece of mental damage comparable to Bruce Wayne.

Nightwing had been freedom, but also _not_ freedom. In defining himself by what Bruce didn’t want, he still defined himself by Bruce’s rules, and thereby Bruce himself. Nightwing was the _illusion_ of freedom, the _illusion_ of choice and responsibility when he was but a thirty-minute trip from his not-father’s meddling and carefully concealed monitoring and everything else he could so desire. When he dared press those boundaries, those guidelines so woefully embedded in his heart and soul and mind, Bruce made it _very_ clear that Nightwing was not freedom. Nightwing hadn’t been the promotion he’d imagined it as, it hadn’t been the next phase of his journey towards… _something_. It had been a diversion, a side project – as in death so in life – Bruce had never respected his desires as much as he wanted Dick to believe. Blockbuster’s death showed him that. Joker’s first death showed him that. Bruce’s death showed him that.

**_God damn right, you should be scared of me  
Who is in control?_ **

****

But not-Dick Grayson… _him_ … he is freedom and choice, chaos and control, madness and sanity in a pretty red package. He is beauty and grace and fun and laughter and everything he damn well _wants_ to be, everything he _dares_ to be because grey _has_ no limits, no restrictions or petty guidelines set by a traumatized child whose normality died with his parents. Golden Boys can be red too, Golden Boys can be fucked up and can laugh and can trail entrails down pretty white marble because:

****

**_I paced around for hours on empty  
I jumped at the slightest of sounds  
And I couldn't stand the person inside me  
I turned all the mirrors around_ **

****

“ _My destiny is blood, is it not? My birthright, my fate, whatever you wish to call it,_ _is blood. Mine, yours – HAHA – his. I killed your Cobb and now I kill you, and what fun murder is between acquaintances! I can’t wait to make your outsides match your insides!”_

And he hums, considering, their Grandmaster at the tip of his stolen blade –

“ _So **ugly** you are, no honor amongst murderers, I suppose, but you try to look so pretty, so perfect, when the only pristine and perfect thing you have is your white masks—”_

His laughter cuts him off again – no control in madness, is there? – bubbling and echoing through the jittery chamber, beheaded talons hanging from the ceiling as a deterrent ( _like little flies strung up for his web as he builds, and build he will on bones and bloodshed and bodies of those who lie, who hate and who aren’t fun enough to live_ )—

“ _Let’s paint them **red** , shall we?”_

****

****

**_I'm bigger than my body  
I'm colder than this home  
I'm meaner than my demons  
I'm bigger than these bones_ **

****

Before now, there isn’t choice.

There’s right and wrong defined by a man who hurts him more than he helps him.

There’s black and white defined by a society that has no sense of grandeur or eloquence.

There’s son and failure defined by someone who can’t keep his views consistent.

There is _yes_ and there is _no_ and there is what he wants and what he’s allowed and what he’s told and what he’s not.

There are wandering hands that don’t give a damn for his tears and his protests. There are red smiles and crowbars that take what they want without thinking of anything outside of satisfaction. There are choices and decisions and doubts he isn’t privy too, because of who he isn’t rather than who he is.

****

****

**_And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"  
I can't help this awful energy  
God damn right, you should be scared of me  
Who is in control?_ **

****

So he doesn’t care.

So he doesn’t stop.

So he makes a choice.

…and he doesn’t _care_ if it’s wrong, when right leaves him guilty with holes where he should be, pieces shattered and broken and taken by crowbars and red eyes and friends and liars and lovers and enemies.

He chooses to kill, before the venom takes a more active form.

He chooses to laugh, when the venom starts to make itself known in his blood.

He chooses to accept, when his antidote is done and ready to be prescribed.

The dark isn’t a grand seduction, after all – it’s something _innate_ , something deep within him he only realized when he first killed. They all have light and dark in them, they are all shades of grey, and he’s so sick of being tarnished white, so sick of expectations and hatred and scorn and no choices.

He’s not a songbird, he doesn’t belong in a cage.

****

****

**_I'm well acquainted with villains that live in my head  
They beg me to write them so they'll never die when I'm dead  
And I've grown familiar with villains that live in my head  
They beg me to write them so I'll never die when I'm dead_ **

There is a freedom in bloodshed… a freedom in violence.

He’s always wanted to be free, to be himself, and this is the most himself and free he’s ever been. Free of burdens and guilt, free of blame and scorn, free of doubt, because Donna and Damian and Lian and Bruce and himself and Jason and Babs and Clark and all the countless others he’d hurt or hadn’t saved, all those he’d never been enough for.

Each piece is taken and never returned, even when the corpse became a not-corpse.

Each piece ripped from his heart and thrown in his face, because _‘you didn’t avenge me, did you?’_ and ‘ _you didn’t save me, did you?’_

And drowning, drowning in voices and silence and sounds and whiteness, expectations and obligations and absence and existence.

****

****

**_I'm bigger than my body  
I'm colder than this home  
I'm meaner than my demons  
I'm bigger than these bones_ **

****

He hears them still, hears their laughter and their scorn, their cries, and their pain.

He hears Donna tell him to stand down.

He hears Jason’s unanswered voicemail.

He hears Roy’s screams for Lian.

He hears Catalina and Mirage taunting him amongst the cries of _whore_ and _slut_.

Because Dick Grayson is pathetic, right?

Because Dick Grayson is broken, right?

Because Dick Grayson is nothing, right?

They wanted him to be someone else, so he became no one else.

They wanted him _happy_ so he put smiles wherever he went.

They wanted him sane and insane, so he picked neither and both.

****

****

**_And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"  
I can't help this awful energy  
God damn right, you should be scared of me  
Who is in control?_ **

****

“If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world becomes the same.”

Said the Dark Knight to his impressionable Squire fresh from the arms of near-death, ripe for the picking and indoctrination required of light and white and dark and black.

But he didn’t stop at _one_ , did he?

He didn’t stop at ten, either.

He _doesn’t_ stop, and that’s the fucking point – _his_ point, at least, not _theirs_ – because on the third night he goes to Harleen Quinzel and tempts her with bloodied lips and easy lies. He gives her affection and fun and that same _madness_ that had so tempted a young doctor desperate for fame.

“You’re not my Puddin’,” She says, an odd gleam in her blue eyes, and he grins, still dripping in blood and marble, gold and insanity.

“Oh I _killed_ that bastard, darlin’. You’ll find I’m much more… _flexible_.”

And they fuck, because he doesn’t care and she thinks she does, and it’s _fun_ which is all that matters even as it doesn’t.

By the fourth night, Bruce tells the League.

By the fifth, Jason Todd finds the Joker’s decomposing corpse wrapped in golden paper, a large tag with an affectionate _Little Wing_ painted in red leaving no question of its origins.

By the sixth, he’s lost count of kills.

By the seventh, he’s the Clown King of Crime, with a Harley Quinn mad and happy at his side (because he has charms his victim did not, and Harleen prefers sweetness to true cruelty, and not-Dick can shape himself on occasion, can bend and mold to get what he wants).

By the eighth, Donna confronts him with Wally and Roy at her side.

“This isn’t you, Dickie _!”_ she cries, and he laughs, laughs until he’s crying too, until the permanently not-permanent red runs down his face with the tears, then a soberer:

“You died, Donna. You left.”

But his smile is still in place because _they_ want him smiling and _he_ wants to be smiling, and pretty lies are better than dropping flies, and madness is a comfort, at times, when sanity is ugly and gross and not _fun_ , not _fun at all._

And Wally looks heartbroken, his heart as ever shining through his eyes.

And Roy looks desperate, near as desperate as he had when his daughter died.

“You all leave,” He continues, with that smiling-not-smile and that sober tone. “Everyone leaves me, and I’ve decided that I deserve a laugh, the laugh everyone else gets. I get the last laugh, just like I did before. Right, Harls?”

She flashes him a grin as she attacks Donna, and they share a laugh.

His friends hold back, and he and Harley don’t.

He doesn’t kill them, but he hurts them, hurts them as much as their departures hurt him.

****

**_And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"_  
I can't help this awful energy  
God damn right, you should be scared of me  
Who is in control?**

****

He knows the words and the moves.

He knows the emotions and strikes.

He knows it all and he uses it all because he isn’t a martyr desperate for affection anymore.

His birthright is this – _fun_ , and he’s decided he’ll have fun any way he wants to.

No more hatred and scorn.

No more pretty lies and ugly thoughts.

No more obligations and failed expectations.

It’s nothing so simple as sanity, nor so complex as madness.

It is both.

He is both.

Dark fixations and fantasies…

Blood spill and murder hidden by blindness…

No one can see who he truly is until it is already too late.

And it is _far_ too late.

_~~You’re FIRED~~ _

_~~Slut, couldn’t even tell it wasn’t your girlfriend!~~ _

_~~Quiet, Querido…~~ _

_~~…Everyone you love, everyone you hate…~~ _

_~~His name was **Jason** , right?~~ _

_~~We were the best, Grayson…~~ _

_~~You were supposed to be one…~~ _

_~~The GRAY SON of Gotham...~~ _

_~~STAY BACK!~~ _

_~~Lian… is dead…~~ _

_~~Bruce…~~ _

_~~You **let** them kill you!~~ _

_~~Don’t make me…~~ _

_~~You **let** them unmask you!~~ _

_~~Please…not this…~~ _

__

His skin is pale.

His lips are red.

(The Joker is reborn)

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts?


End file.
